The Untethered halves

Light after dark after light after dark, the sun burns off the night, and the night returns to claw back its natural ubiquitous place in the sky. Between each phase exquisiteness, mesmerizing colours and strange visions fill the eyes, a reminder to the world that change always comes. Air that turns warm from cold and cold to warm again, in doing so it gains energy, motivation and movement. The breath of life is breathed anew, inhaled only to be exhaled again. The immovable meets the malleable like a rock hitting water from a great height which for a moment emits a spray of fleeting energy that awes and stuns all who see it.

In one of these between phases, Chandra Sol was conceived, although she was unaware of it. At the moment of her conception, a thunderous boulder with immense size and force collided with an elegant bright distant star in a faraway place, spraying the darkness with an illumination that spread for aeons across the vastness of the universe.

When this happened, a small pocket of unreality was formed and gained speed ever faster through time and space, though it contained none of our own space or time, finding its way to what would eventually become Chandra Sol. Just as her brain and body were forming and taking shape, the glancing blow of this pocket would leave its unremitting mark on her forever.

What remained was a portion of Chandra that existed in our world, while simultaneously the rest existed elsewhere, she could see this when she looked in a mirror, half her face seemed to look calmly back at her and the other half looked strange and unhinged. Although she existed in both worlds there was little communication between them. Due to this Chandra Sol had spent her life managing an outwardly imperceptible, but very real internal unease. Especially during transition periods between the realities, Chandra had grown up feeling these dusks and dawns shifting through her. Mildly at first, when both worlds were still firmly intertwined and moving with symmetry, but growing stronger into her adolescence as they drifted apart on different paths, and through to adulthood when they became almost completely independent of each other.

For a long time, Chandra had thought this was a blessing, ‘What’s better than having two brains’ she would think, but now the lack of communication between them had started to cause her problems. Her thoughts were scattered which caused her enormous stress, until she’d begun her ritualistic walking through the woods.

Chandra had started walking the woods at night, not knowing why she couldn’t sleep, but knowing being outside and under the sky made her feel safe. Her insomnia had worsened over time and she put it down to the effects she would feel every dusk, the strange otherness she couldn’t put her finger on. A feeling she was hounded by most evenings just as she would be getting ready to sleep, she could feel another her calling her, a wakeful and excited her. The kind of feeling she would have just before waking on a beautiful day knowing there’s a world of opportunity and joy to see, but she would be trying to sleep.

Some nights she would get strange visions of a woman who looked just like her, only pale as moonlight with bright silvery eyes, looking back at her. She wasn’t afraid of this woman, she was drawn to her, pulled like the tides pull the ocean toward the rocks. But she would always resist the pull, feeling if she succumbed, she might be lost forever. This would be the time, most nights, she would wake, and head off into the woodland. She would look up at the night sky, breathe the air, and wait for sleep to pull her in again, some nights it would come back to her, other nights she might be out until the sun started to creep up through the trees.

She would keep herself acutely aware of the changes that the seasons imposed on the trees, animals and the earth. The leaves falling as autumn took hold, the ground becoming hard as frost sunk in, all of the foliage dying back uncluttering the path. Soon spring would come, buds would appear and life would start again, birds sing, and creatures emerge to scurry about the woodland floor again. All things correct, following their pattern, always the metronome ticks.

But one night, deep into winter, cold and shivering, Chandra saw a daisy pocking out of the woodland floor, ‘you’re not supposed to be here’ Chandra thought as she walked over to pick the flower. ‘You shouldn’t be poking your head up until summer’ Chandra brushed it off thinking perhaps it had been unseasonably warm, despite evidence to the contrary, and continued along the path. Until she came to the clearing where she would often gaze up at the view of the night sky, only the night sky had started to turn a deep russet with wisps of magenta. Breathtaking, but all wrong, Chandra was sure it wasn’t that late yet or early, it would usually only take her 1-2 hours to get to the clearing, and she’d left just after dusk. It couldn’t be sunrise yet. Chandra turned back and hurried home to try and get what little sleep she could manage before her day began.

Chandra's head hit her pillow with a thump, endless questions rattled around her mind but she refused to entertain them, all she could think about was the daisy as she drifted off into a deep sleep. Her double came to her in her dreams, she seemed to be beckoning Chandra toward her, her eyes glowing brighter than before, pleading, pulling her in desperately. Chandra once again fought her until she was awake again.

Chandra decided to start keeping a diary of sunrise and sunset times, as well as any other out-of-place observations she had made. As the months passed the diary grew thicker as she added notes, things weren’t running like clockwork anymore, this much she was sure of the metronome hadn’t stopped working but it was no longer in time.

One spring morning she must have woken earlier than usual, feeling the drag and tear on her body and brain, it was still dark, despite her clock saying it was nearly noon.

She tried to open her door to the still cold and dark morning air, but it wouldn’t open, she pulled as hard as she could on the handle to no avail. Chandra got frustrated and kicked her front door and it burst open, had she forgotten which way her door opened!? She stood mouth agape at what she saw looking back at her, the darkness of the early morning, but also her silvery pale self, in her home with her mouth ajar. A mirror image reflected, not solid yet not quite transparent, almost superimposed over the background that she was used to. Chandra rubbed her eyes for a moment, her mirror image had moved closer as she did so, ‘You’re not supposed to be here’ Chandra thought in an internal scream. Her pale misty doppelganger looked sweetly calm as she approached, she was beckoning Chandra to her. Chandra closed her eyes and stepped backwards pulling the door shut as she did. She stood for a moment, eyes closed hoping she would wake up, when a gentle knocking pulled her around.

Chandra steadied herself and envisioned the sun beaming, the grass waving in a gentle breeze, butterflies coasting over the flowers. As she did so she gently pulled the door and it opened, as it normally would. And just like that it was day, the sun bright and burning her eyes the noise of the open world streaming into her home, squirrels darting when they sensed the movement of the door. Nothing unusual, nothing unexpected. Chandra pulled on her boots and started walking, happy to feel the warmth of spring. For a moment all seemed well, and an air of joyous reunion filled the woodland as she walked.

Once Chandra reached the clearing the burning power of the sun hit her face as if for the first time, Chandra swung her head in recoil and looked back into the shade of the woods and the pale lady was walking up the path behind her surrounded by shade that followed her like a dark spotlight, yet still glowing with a white light that illuminated her. Chandra for the first time felt afraid of her, “hey” she called out not expecting a response. The white figure lifted her head and looked piercingly back.

“What are you doing here?” Chandra shouted again “You’re not real, you’re just made of moonlight”

The lady looked as if she understood

Chandra for the first time approached the woman, feeling an invisible force between them, the air itself seemed to scatter in its wake. Chandra breathed deeply as she stepped into the shadow that was surrounding her, she could hear the other lady breathing for the first time as she got close.

“You’re here,” She said in a song-like melodious voice, “you’ve come into my world, you’re not just a dream?” She looked confused at Chandra.

Chandra looked around herself and the whole woods was dark now. She and the other lady walked over to the clearing and looked up together. Stars filled the sky, the moon was bright.

“I’ve had dreams,” the other lady said “where you’ve been there lighting the way, with you’re burning smile. But you have to stop, everything in my world is turning upside down, time is all wrong and I think you’re causing it somehow”

Chandra looked upset “I haven’t been doing anything, I think we’ve just been mixed up and scrabbled and we’re tearing each other apart”

“We need to rejoin each other, I think we've been separating for a long time,” The lady said in her sing-song voice.

“What happens then?” Chandra said, “Will we both exist in one world, or both disappear forever?”

“I don’t know but we can't keep drifting apart like this” They walked head-on to each other and collided, everything went bright for a moment, and all things were drawn toward them, the trees bent in at them, some even snapped with a frightening crack that echoed through the woods. Birds scattered with a thunderous roar of wing beats as they simultaneously took to the air. Dust, rocks and plants were pulled toward them as they were dragged from their resting place, uprooted and ripped from the ground. Suddenly cold air rushed in and everything went still, the air went void as chaos subsided, dust dropped slowly to the ground and Chandra was gone.

The world returned to its perfect rhythm, an exhale was felt throughout the woods as all the creatures sensed a shift back to the reality they knew.

And from that day on, people would travel from far and wide to that clearing in the woods, and rumours would spread that if you stood there at the right time. with the right eyes.

You could see an eclipse form out of nowhere.